Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (6 page)

Quinn

I followed after security, escorting the woman out. She had seemed to have quieted down. She struggled in the big man’s grip and freed herself, saying she could escort herself out. I caught up with the security guard, who watched the woman walking away. First of all, I was sure that that was incorrect protocol. I was sure that they were supposed to like, hold her for a while, get her picture, or call the police.
Something
. I didn’t think she was allowed to be back where the lockers were, and if she wasn’t, then that was a breach of regulation. Were they really just going to let her go?

“Excuse me, sir, who was that woman?” I asked the guard.

“Beats me,” he said shrugging. I frowned. What did he
mean
he didn’t know? I looked in the direction she had gone. The woman had already left the arena when I went to check for her outside. I went back inside. It was no use.
That
had been a potential story, right there, and I had just lost it. I retreated to the parking garage where my car was parked.

Well. That had been an interesting day at the office.

Where did I even begin? The day’s events had just mounted in excitement since I had gotten here. First, I got the interview with the Yellow Jackets’ coach. A
legend
of a man in the sport. A man who was potentially leading the fifth team of his career to a championship if the team focused and played well the rest of the season.

Then there had been talking to Dante. If anyone asked me out loud, I would have denied it, but Dante Rock… he was… something else. He was tall, but that was standard in the sport. He was a
phenomenon
. He was
so
skilled.
Shockingly
talented. We, as a nation, owed a reward to the first person who had put a basketball in Dante’s hands when he was a kid. With the way he lived, it was a miracle that he could still play at all.

Then, the icing on the cake of what had been the
most
eventful day was the lady with the black eye. Wow. Just
wow
. I couldn’t even make this sort of thing up; it had actually happened. She had just appeared, and then she had started yelling at the guy like they knew each other.

The jury was still out on whether or not they
did
know each other. He claimed that they didn’t. She claimed that they did. It was just a terrible case of he said-she said. I wish I could have heard more of what
she
had said because this was absolutely scandalous. In my gut, and I knew that this was not me being impartial, I wanted to defer to her. My immediate impulse was to believe the woman because so many times, women were not believed…and that was a problem. I never wanted to be the person, the woman who shut another woman down when she tried to speak up about something as egregious as this.

Dante had had some wild headlines about him and his life, but if this one was true… Dante Rock would become the guy we talked about fondly as having
been
one of the greatest of all time but he had shot himself in the foot before his career really got a chance to progress to the next level.

Athletes and generally well-loved men in the public eye recovered from a lot. This wasn’t a sex scandal. It was domestic abuse, and there was
evidence
, a woman with a black eye. People would likely have a
lot
of questions and would point fingers, maybe even siding with him, but he would never be able to go about playing the way he had before. Even in the event that his public apology was successful, and he squeezed out enough tears to get people to believe him, it would take a while for his reputation to build itself back up again.

All this was in the event that he was actually guilty. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I
was
getting ahead of myself. There was no actual confirmation that he had done anything. The black eye was evidence of
something
, but it was not evidence of the exact thing that she was pointing a finger at Dante for.

He had said that he didn’t do it, and maybe he didn’t. I didn’t disbelieve him, but I didn’t believe him either. I believed neither of them. There was a lot more that had to be uncovered on both their sides to make a decision about what was going on.

Dante had stopped me like he was really going to tell me something, but I had just left. I couldn’t look at him just then. It was an emotional response, and maybe I was wrong about it, but I needed a minute. For a second, I let myself believe that he was guilty. I allowed myself to believe the woman when she made her accusation, and in that minute, I
hated
him.

It wasn’t that far of a jump to make, that Dante Rock had beaten a woman up. That wasn’t good, but it was true. There would have been more people who believed that he had hit a woman than the number who believed that he hadn’t. He was kind of a thug. He didn’t have a good track record with women, and frankly, it wouldn’t have been that surprising if he had done something like this for real.

“Quinn! Quinn, wait. Stop…
don’t
leave. I have to talk to you,” a voice called from behind me. I looked over my shoulder and spotted Dante running up to me. He had followed me, which was creepy. I walked faster and got to my car.

“Wait,” he said, catching up and stopping at my car, resting his hand on its roof.

“Following me around, Dante?” I asked, looking for my key.

“You can't leave before I talk to you.”

“That is where you are
mistaken
, my friend. I don’t need your permission to do anything.” I pulled my key out and stuck it in the door, pulling the door open. He slammed it shut and moved closer to me. I looked at him like he had lost his mind. I tried to open the door again and he did the same thing.

“Let go.”

“No. You have to listen to me. I don’t know who that woman is.”

“I heard you the first time you said it. Leave me alone.”

“No.” He slammed the door shut again when I pulled it open.

“You are going to break my door.”

“I need you to listen to me, Quinn.
Please
. Hear me out. I need you to listen to me. Something happened to that woman, but I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know her. I haven’t seen her before today, at the same time that you saw her. You
have
to believe me.”

“Telling me like that, here in a parking garage, isn’t going to mean anything.
I
am not the one you need to convince. The woman seemed pretty pissed, and I would bet you anything that she is going to try and sell the story to someone.”

“What am I supposed to do about that? Pay her?”

“Paying her would make you seem guilty. What you have to do is release an official story explaining yourself. One that does not come from your rep, your agent, your publicist, your coach or the team. An unbiased, third-party reporter.”

“Are
you
going to do it?”

“I
want
it. I will listen to what you have to say and report it, but only if you can promise me that this exclusive is mine.”

“It’s yours. I just need it to be known that I’m innocent.”

“It will be.”

“Thank you so much for doing this.”

“Don’t thank me yet.
There’s more.”

I could almost see the man’s body clench in on itself. What did he think I was going to ask him for? Why did he look like he was expecting the worst? If he was expecting me to extort or blackmail him, he was mistaken.

“You are Dante Rock, a lot of people want to get the inside story, and so do I. I want interviews, whenever I want them. You have to be available for me to interview whenever I call.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to do that? I have a schedule. I have games and training and press.”

“I
know
you have all that and those things aren't the ones that are going to be interrupted.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked a little mystified.

“I want you for the rest of the season. I follow if you travel, and I can help you with this image problem that you seem to be facing. You are there when I want you. I won't interrupt your work, but outside of that, if I need an interview, your schedule has to become free enough to accommodate it.”

He winced.

“That’s not reasonable.”

“If we can't agree, I can just leave and let that woman say whatever she wants about you without bothering to counter it.”

“Okay…
okay
, fine. But you have to help people believe me and not her.”

“I will, but Dante… if you did it to anyone, any other woman, and I find out about it, you are
done
. I am going to ruin your entire life. And I will enjoy doing it.”

He looked at me. He looked like he was between a rock and a hard place. Torn between Scylla and Charybdis. He was welcome to choose whichever option suited him. I didn’t have a dog in this fight. This was
his
problem. I didn’t need him. I wanted him. The story would be amazing, but he needed me. This problem, with the woman accusing him of violence, would only snowball if left unattended. Ignoring the accusations would be tantamount to an admission of guilt. If he knew what was good for him, he would make the right decision.

“Fine. You’ve got it. You can have your interviews and you can write what you want about me, as long as it’s better than whatever she is going to try and do.”

“Of course. You just show up for the interviews and leave the rest to me.”

“Thank you, Quinn,” he said, gratefully. He put both his hands on my shoulders and looked at me, right in the face as he did, unwavering eye contact. I cocked my head to the side. That had been
too
easy. I had the upper hand here, and I liked it. I could technically say whatever I wanted, and he would have to acquiesce. I had Dante Rock by the balls, and there was a real perverted sense of power that came over me, thinking about it. This big, huge man was really leaving his fate in my hands, quite literally for whatever was to come of his future.

The way he held my gaze, I felt a little like he might lean in and kiss me, and I wasn’t really sure that I would have stopped him if he did. He had made a full one-hundred-eighty-degree shift from that slick talking baller I was talking to during the game.

“This isn’t for you; it’s for
me
,” I assured him.

“As if you
won't
enjoy having Dante Rock at your beck and call for the rest of the basketball season? You don’t know how many women would kill each other for the chance.”

And there he was again. Arrogant smart talker and cocky bastard. Thought I had lost him for a second. I moved a step back so his hands left my shoulders. He had referred to himself in the third person. Why did that piss me off so much? I did it sometimes, but it was so obnoxious when he did.

“If you fuck with me, Dante, I will make it so that you will never make another cent playing basketball in this entire country.”

“I got you. No need to be
bitchy
about it.”

I narrowed my eyes and he laughed at me.

“See ya later,
TMZ
, I’ll be waiting on your call,” he said as he began to walk away.

“Oh and Dante, one more thing…”

Dante

I was behind the wheel; I probably should have waited a little while to stop being so mad first. I didn't need to get in a wreck. Not with this car. I had
just
gotten it. It was last year’s Lamborghini Huracan and I had had it customized on the inside so that it could actually accommodate a person who was six foot seven. It had been a bitch to finally get them to color it the color I wanted, matte black. At least I could count on the traffic here in Los Angeles to slow me down.

I’m not a good guy. I’m
not
, but at least I fucking
know
that. I’ll stand in it and own it. I’m a piece of shit, and I have never claimed to be anything other than just that. I start fights, I fuck girls whom I never call back, I spend my money on shit I don’t need, but I’m
not
an abuser. No fucking way. I’ll do a lot of shit, but I have a line too—and hitting women crosses it.

Who the hell was that broad anyway? Where did she come from and why was she after me for hitting her. I had fucked a lot of girls when we were both drunk, but I knew for a fact that this was not one of them. Even if she was, there was no way I gave her that black eye because I don’t hit women.
I don’t fucking hit women.

I saw my mom get banged around too much for me to ever even think of raising a hand to a woman. If I throw a fist at someone, it's because I know they can throw theirs back just as hard. What kind of piece of shit coward hits a woman? You might as well just have your cock and balls cut off because you don’t deserve them. You aren’t a man, not a
real
one if you would do that to a woman.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter as I started to remember.
Ha
. Remember… I never fucking forgot. I never forgot my mom and my dad. I never forgot the way I would hear her scream and cry and beg my dad not to come after my sister and me. I remembered her telling me to take my little sister, Gabbie, into the other room and to lock the door from the inside, not opening it up for anyone but her. Gabbie used to cry, and I had to hold her and tell her that everything was okay. It was a lie every fucking time. He nearly murdered her, more than once. The way she used to plead with him, I know he was taking it all out on her, whatever he wanted to do to me and Gabbie.

The thought still scared me to this day. Sometimes we would be in the house at the same time. Other times, we would get home and mom was so beat up, she could hardly get out of bed. There would be blood on her face and the bedcover and she would tell me not to let Gabbie in the room. She used to send us to sleep over at the neighbors sometimes when she didn’t want us to hear another fight and the neighbors would just silently take us, no questions asked. They knew what was happening. Everyone knew. Mom used to try to hide it with makeup and dark glasses, but she always took it off at night and her skin was raw and bruised. Even our teachers at school started suspecting things because both of us, Gabbie and me, started tanking at our education.

Our grades slipped; we stopped talking to other kids; and we started acting up. When mom was finally called to school because I had been fighting, she had cried. When we got home, she hugged me and cried some more. Her tears got on my hair and on my face, and I just wanted her to stop. She kept saying that she thought she had failed, that I had turned out just like my dad.

She might as well have told me right then that she didn’t love me because it hurt just as if she had. The man who had made her life and ours a living hell before he finally walked out completely and left us high and dry?
That
was the man she thought I was going to be? I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I fucking
couldn’t
let it happen.

She had been begging me since I was a teenager to get into therapy so that I could talk about all that stuff with someone. She had been and I think it was the main thing that had gotten her this far. There were many times when I thought that this time or that time was going to be the last time that I would see her alive. She had needed it though. The guy never touched me and he had never touched Gabbie. Mom was the one who received all the real abuse. Then there was the whole mess after with the drugs, but she was better now. She was fine and healthy.

I ended up going to therapy, eventually a few times because it meant so much to her. I didn’t really get along with that dude who was talking to me. He seemed like an asshole. Like he knew it all and everything I was saying to him was just really boring because he had heard it all before. I didn’t feel like he was listening to me. I felt like he had just been sitting there as I talked, waiting for me to finish so he could sit there and give me the rundown of everything he believed in his opinion was wrong with me. I didn’t want to know what was wrong with me I just wanted the asshat to listen. I was paying him four hundred and fifty a fucking hour to fucking
listen
, and he wasn’t.

I had bailed after a few sessions, but there was this one thing that I had ended up taking from the session. He spoke to me like I was a child who didn’t know big words. He said that abuse tended to go in a cycle. If a person was abused, or exposed to abuse, there was a good chance that they would become an abuser themselves.

That shit hit me like a ton of bricks because fuck that. Fuck
that
and fuck
that guy,
Dr. Percy Longenekker, yeah, that was his real name. He didn’t know me.  All his degrees and shit didn’t mean he knew the person that I was and what I was thinking. He didn’t. He didn’t know
shit
.

He had been saying there was a chance that people who had experienced abuse could go on to become abusers themselves, but what I had heard was, oh,
Dante, you are going to be an abuser if you aren’t already
. It felt like he was pointing the finger at me. I kept it cool in the session because I didn’t want to have to talk to the police if I punched this guy out and he called them. That would have been more trouble than he was worth because he was
wrong
.

First of all, my dad yelled, he yelled the house down, but he never touched me. He never laid a hand on me or on Gabbie. It was my mom who had been abused, and she never, she never did to us what he did to her.
Never
. She protected us and tried to make sure we were out of the house when it happened so we wouldn’t have to hear it or see it. Was
that
what he had meant? Was he going to try and say that my mom had done something to us?

I’m not perfect. I fly off the handle a hell of a lot, but the one thing I swore to God that I would never do was to raise my hand to hit a woman. It didn’t matter if she did it first or what. I wouldn’t fucking do it.

My mom was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. She survived, barely, but I never fucking forgot.

And now
that
bitch. Quinn.

She thought I was really out here hitting women and that made my blood boil. Not only that, she had me by the fucking balls. Where’d she even come from? One day I'm playing ball, minding my own business, and the next this reporter is trying to get me to tell all about this other crazy woman who thinks I hit her.

This wasn’t right. The women I kept around were never this much trouble. I liked it simple. I offered only
one
thing and I expected them likewise to offer me only
one
thing. I never asked for more and never offered more. It was simple, the exchange, and I expected it to be respected or else we just weren’t going to work out anymore. That was
it
, really.

I had never… I would never.

I didn’t know the woman, and even if I did, if someone hit her it sure as shit wasn’t me.

Quinn Blaze. I had never had a woman lord over me like this in my life. She had me by the balls. It wasn’t as if she could write that I had hit that lady because I hadn’t, but then again, who was to say that she wouldn’t. Maybe she hated me enough to spin an article that was false. She didn’t talk to me like she believed me.

Why was I so chopped up over this? Yeah, the woman had the power to say whatever she wanted about me and have it read and believed by millions of people, but that wasn’t the problem. It was
her
. I wanted
her
to believe me. I saw the way she was looking at me when she thought I had done it, and I didn’t want her thinking that about me. I couldn’t have that. She looked, not scared, but disgusted. Like she didn’t want to be around me and I had to make her believe me.

Fuck
. She
already
didn’t like me and now there was
this
fucking shit. She was so tough to get through to. Whatever power I had over other women, this one was immune.

I was a grown man, nearly fucking thirty and this woman had the fucking gall to order me around? She had the audacity to threaten
me
? I didn’t have anything to be scared of, but I didn’t take orders. I didn’t let people order me around and make conditions about what they wanted from me.

She had an entire laundry list of shit she wanted from me. It was like being a kid, and I was not anybody’s fucking child. She wanted me to live like a monk or something. She didn’t want me to drink, to go out, or to get girls. That
last
one was definitely going to be a problem. The only way I would be able to stay away from other girls was if she was providing some other avenue for me to get my dick wet.

If that smart mouth and her pussy weren’t available for my use whenever I needed them, then we were going to have a problem. She wanted me to be available whenever she wanted to ask me things. She needed me interview ready at all times and that, that was just
not
realistic.

No way. It didn’t work like that and she needed to learn that. I just needed to teach her.

I didn’t like this. It was a new position for me. I had had women on top of me before, but not in
this
context. Usually, those women
wanted
to be there. I let them be there and I enjoyed them being there as well. I did not like this. Quinn was hot, she could get it. I wanted to give it to her, but I knew better than to fuck with her, or fuck her, especially now when she had the power to ruin my career.

I would have to move to China and play in their league over there. I didn’t want it. I really,
really
didn’t fucking want it, or I’d have to get a real job. The thought made me shudder. I wasn’t dumb. I just had never needed to be
smart
because that wasn’t the thing that was going to make me and the people around me rich.

The thing they don’t tell you about sports scholarships in college was you only had to make a minimum GPA. Minimum. And that was a fucking 2.0. You could miss half your classes and still get that if you did the reading. Another thing they did was enroll you in easy courses so you would be able to pass. You were there to play your sport, but they had to justifiably show that you had a reason to be there besides your sport.

It was stupid, but that was what had earned me both a college degree and a sports career. My degree was in communications. I had no fucking clue what I could even do with it if Quinn went through with ruining my career and I had to try and fall back on it.

The Quinn thing was solved, or at least it was solved as far as it was going to get solved. I had to do damage control. I had to find out who the woman was and I had to make sure that nobody got to hear about this before Quinn had her little article or whatever ready. I was not looking forward to the interview. I didn’t even know what she would end up writing because I had told her all there was to tell about the woman and what was going on.

She had so many rules and conditions and shit, I had one of my own. She did televised interviews, but the ones she wanted with me were apparently text. That was fine. I didn’t actually care if she wanted to take pictures or video, she just couldn’t do it without my permission first. No.
That
would be a problem.